John Darnielle’s poetry is center stage in “Fault Lines” as luxury and emotional distress mix.

Track: “Fault Lines”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

Many, many better writers than I have said that John Darnielle is a talented lyricist. It’s the primary hook of the Mountain Goats, if it isn’t the emotion behind everything, and it’s on display all the time. “Fault Lines” is familiar territory for a Mountain Goats song: folks get drunk and avoid their emotional problems. What makes it interesting is the language. From the first line, we have “down here where the heat’s so fine.” It’s a simple construction, but it’s not how you often think of “hot” weather. The first verse wanders through descriptions of expense, but my favorite is “we have our strawberries flown in from England.” I don’t even know if that’s worth it or not, but it certainly conveys a lifestyle.

John Darnielle delivers “Fault Lines” like a shanty. You’ll find yourself bobbing your head to it as he strums and sing-songs the descriptions of wasteful luxury and system damage that this couple experiences. “They don’t make us feel better about who we are,” the narrator says, unnecessarily, but they really hit that fact hard. By the end, after several more descriptions, they tell us that all of this won’t “send our love to its reward down in Hell.” It’s about as intense as it comes, even for a song like this, and we have to stand up and listen.

The juxtaposition of fancy, fine things and disastrously failing love is well drawn. The characters are self aware, but that doesn’t stop them. They still keep piling up debts to try to push off the reality of what they feel. It’s certainly a strategy, but the fact that this won’t change the outcome is clear.